One of three players to make the short journey East from New Road, Worcester to Trent Bridge, Nottingham, Dillon Pennington made such an immediate impact that he was selected for the England squad for the First Test against West Indies.
When he was not in the final XI, Pennington returned to Notts for the rather less glamorous fixture of a 50-over ‘warm up’ game against Lincolnshire. In that match he picked up an injury that brought his first season with Nottinghamshire to an early end.
At that point he had claimed 31 First-Class wickets at 23.80 in just eight games – figures that meant he was Notts’s leading wicket taker in 2024, despite missing almost half the County Championship matches.
Dillon Young Pennington was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire on 26 February 1999 and was educated at Wrekin College.
He played age-group cricket for Shropshire before joining the Academy at Worcestershire, where he progressed to the first eleven, attracting sufficient attention with some impressive bowling to earn call-up to the Under-19 ODI squad in South Africa in 2017 and for the World Cup in New Zealand the following January.
His selection for the 2018 World Cup came in the same year he was handed his List A debut for Worcestershire in the Royal London One Day Cup, a marker of his potential as a teenager.
He went on to tally 117 first team appearances across six seasons for the Pears before making the switch to Trent Bridge ahead of the 2024 season.
Pennington bowls right-arm fast-medium, using his height and pace to great advantage. He also bats right-handed and to date has just one First-Class half century to his name, 56 made against Essex in 2021. His best return in 2024 was 5-96 against Somerset at Trent Bridge.
Nottinghamshire First-Class Number 673
October 2024
Dillon Pennington’s career stats (to date) can be seen here